Las Vegas Frontier - The Story Behind A Front Page Newspaper Photo

The front page of the Las Vegas Review Journal on Monday 16 July 2007 had the headline:

Frontier's days end

The main front page picture which accompanied that article was of a man named Ed Phelan, with his arms spread wide while singing karaoke.

You can see the article and picture at:
http://www.lvrj.com/news/8526017.html

You can also see my post entitled "Las Vegas - Farewell Frontier" for my first coverage of this brief karaoke event.

Now this is not a big deal, but it might be interesting to some of you to see what I think is a story behind the story.

Ed Phelan is a nice man who did an enthusiastic one song performance of a Joe Cocker song. Still though I was a little surprised that that is what the LVRJ used as the headline photo. I would have used a photo of something recognizable, such as The Frontier.

The newspaper article stated that there were four customers (not a misprint - four) of the sports book being seranaded. I might be wrong, after all I am an idiot, but by my count the number was zero.

There were no customers of the sports book there. (Four or zero or whatever I know. But here is how I counted it.)

-There was Neil Bush and Ed Phelan who the LVRJ acknowledged as singing.

-Norm Kaye, the famous singer from many years ago, who sang with the Dry Martini Orchestra later in the evening.

-John Locher who photographed for the LVRJ.

-Myself, who John had to have recognized as a photographer as he and I crossed paths while photographing many times that evening.

-Elsewhere in the sports book was a man who ate something and rested. And in the distance there were two employees of Phil's Deli who were on the job, but had nothing to do.

I suppose that part of the difficulty which the LVRJ faced was how to cover the closing of The Frontier, which officially took place at one minute after midnight, when the paper is probably already built at that time.